A Cri­ti­que of the “Report on Pro­sti­tu­tion and Sexual Exploi­ta­tion and its Impact on Gen­der Equa­lity” by Mary Honey­ball, MEP

Tue, 18 Febru­ary 2014 ICRSE Coordinator

Dear Mem­bers of the Euro­pean Parliament,

We, the under­si­gned, would like to voice our serious con­cerns regar­ding the “Report on Pro­sti­tu­tion and Sexual Exploi­ta­tion and its Impact on Gen­der Equa­lity”, draf­ted by Mary Honey­ball, MEP for Lon­don, which will be voted upon during a ple­nary ses­sion on the 27th of Febru­ary 2014 at the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. The report recom­mends the so-called “Swe­dish Model” – by which buy­ing sexual ser­vices is cri­mi­na­li­sed but sel­ling them remains legal.The aim of this let­ter is not to rei­te­rate our argu­ments against the Swe­dish Model. We believe sex workers’ orga­ni­sa­ti­ons them­sel­ves will have alre­ady demons­tra­ted the inef­fec­tiv­en­ess and dan­gers of this model and we stron­gly recom­mend con­sul­ting and lis­ten­ing to them in regards to poli­cies and all other mat­ters that directly affect them.

We would like to draw your atten­tion to the ina­de­quacies of the Report, which is based lar­gely on inac­cu­rate and/or mis­re­p­re­sen­ta­tive data. The sour­ces cited are eit­her stu­dies which have been dis­credi­ted, or are selec­ted to relate to spe­ci­fic cir­cum­stan­ces which do not reflect the expe­ri­en­ces of many people working as sex workers. Nor does the Report con­sider the exten­sive evi­dence from peer-reviewed aca­de­mic stu­dies demons­tra­ting the pro­blems asso­cia­ted with the model pro­po­sed. We are con­cer­ned that this report is not of an accep­ta­ble stan­dard on which to base a vote that would have such a serious, and poten­ti­ally dan­ge­rous, impact on alre­ady mar­gi­na­li­sed popu­la­ti­ons, i.e. migrants and EU citi­zens earning or com­ple­men­ting their live­lihoods by pro­vi­ding sexual ser­vices in exch­ange for payment.

We are aware that the mat­ter you have been asked to vote upon is for many a com­pli­ca­ted or uncom­for­ta­ble one. Howe­ver, we would like to ask you to look at the abun­dance of evi­dence that coun­ters the claims made in Ms Honeyball’s report. We com­pi­led a selec­tion of research-based evi­dence coun­tering the claims made by the sour­ces men­tio­ned by Ms Honey­ball, which we include below. This evi­dence cle­arly indi­ca­tes that Ms Honeyball’s report is seriously bia­sed with regards to the selec­tive cita­tion of sour­ces. Fur­ther­more, it fails to con­sider the needs of male and trans­gen­der sex workers and the diver­sity amongst purchasers of sexual ser­vices. To base any policy on such a metho­do­lo­gi­cally fla­wed docu­ment, par­ti­cu­larly one which would have such a detri­men­tal impact on the human rights and well­being of a large num­ber of mar­gi­na­li­sed indi­vi­du­als, would be set­ting a dan­ge­rous precedent.

The report by Ms Honey­ball fails to address the pro­blems and harms that can sur­round sex work and instead pro­du­ces bia­sed, inac­cu­rate and dis­pro­ven data. We believe that poli­cies should be based on sound evi­dence and thus hope that you will vote against the motion to cri­mi­na­lise sex workers’ cli­ents. We would sug­gest instead that it is import­ant to enter into a con­side­red debate which takes into account the sub­stan­tial amount of robust aca­de­mic evi­dence on the sub­ject, as well as that from sex workers them­sel­ves and civil society groups with long­stan­ding expe­ri­ence of working with sex workers.